


With the Dead

by Lizardbeth



Category: Space: Above and Beyond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-24
Updated: 2006-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:26:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardbeth/pseuds/Lizardbeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the end Nathan can't forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With the Dead

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nathan knew something was wrong with him. He kept seeing them: Paul walked past the window in the corridor and Phousse often strolled through the garden outside. Shane was the worst, since she often wandered through the rec room, watching him with pitying eyes.

He tried to stop seeing them, since he knew they weren't real. The only real one was Cooper and Cooper had stopped coming to visit a long time ago.

Shane had caught him by surprise once, and for one moment he'd actually believed she was real. He'd run after her, seized her shoulder and made her turn around, only to find it was someone else. The orderlies had wrestled him down, injecting him with something because they thought he'd been attacking her.

The shades didn't leave, but he stopped flinching when he saw them so he supposed that was progress of a sort. After awhile he was inured to their presence enough that the doctor believed that he wasn't seeing them very often and allowed a lower dose of his meds.

He was glad. Or at least he knew he would be once he could feel anything and the tranq was out of his system. But he was still numb and disconnected when he wandered out to the rec room.

Bored with the television and unable to concentrate on any reading, he took over a table by the window and a pack of cards and started building a house. It was slow painstaking work, and it collapsed twice, but he was working on a second level when a familiar voice said in a soft horrified whisper,

"Oh my God, Nathan, what happened to you?"

He closed his eyes and his hand trembled slightly. Shane. It was Shane's voice.

He didn't dare look at the hallucination. The orderlies had eyes like hawks and would notice him looking at nothing. But it sounded so real. So close.

Swallowing he whispered, "I am not hearing this. Shane Vansen died four months ago."

"Nathan, I'm here. I'm alive," she said. "Look at me."

But wasn't that what a hallucination would say? It was his own fucked up brain making her up out of thin air.

He ignored her and placed another card.

"Nathan," her voice was gentle, but just a little pleading. He could see a shadow moving out of the corner of his eye, coming around the table, but he refused to look. "Nathan, I'm real. Me and Vanessa, we made it. Coop found us. Please."

Something touched his arm, where he had it outstretched to lay another card. "Let me," she said and took the card from his fingers. He watched her lay it in place, and her hand looked the same as he remembered.

Then he moved his head to look at her face. Her hair was shorter than he remembered, and her face thinner and paler, but ... it was Shane.

He shut his eyes and opened them again and she was still there. She seemed very calm but also worried if the wrinkle between her brows and narrowed eyes was anything to go by.

He glanced over his shoulder at one of the orderlies, and then back to her. Still there. "I see you all the time," he murmured. "But never this close. I don't think lowering the dose was a good idea."

She bit her lip and looked very sad for a moment, before she made herself smile at him, all soft. "No, Nathan. You're not crazy. You're not imagining anything. I'm real." Her right hand took his, and her grip was warm and alive with a palm abraded by thin new scars. "Feel me?" she asked. "I'm here. I'm back. Vanessa's back. And Coop's back too, once he gets debriefed."

"And Paul?" he asked.

She shook her head sorrowfully. "He didn't make it."

He had to process that for a long time. She and Vanessa and Cooper were all still alive. "I'm sorry," he said to her. "I'm not thinking very well."

Her smile was more genuine this time. "You've got enough tranq in you to keep down an elephant. I'm guessing that means you were a pain in the ass."

He shook his head, not wanting to admit to her how out of his mind he'd been. With his free hand he touched her face and it too felt real. Maybe she was there.

She pulled him in close and hugged him tightly. He hugged her back, at first tentatively, but then more forcefully as he felt all her body against his. Her hair was against his cheek, and he could smell her shampoo.

"God, I've missed you," she whispered. "Everything's going to be all right now. You'll see. We'll help to bring you back, Nathan. We'll bring you home now."

Her voice was catching in her throat, crying or trying not to, and he hung onto her desperately, wanting to believe. But he knew he wouldn't -- he couldn't -- until she gave him some kind of proof. Something he couldn't imagine.

"Tell me what happened," he asked. "I need to know."

She pulled back and her cheeks had tear-tracks on them. She looked in his eyes and nodded. "All right. Where?"

"In the garden?" He almost added, 'where Vanessa likes to walk' but bit his tongue.

He led her toward the open patio doors and half-expected her to be gone every time he turned around. Finally, she took his hand to walk beside him. "Still here," she reassured him.

Behind them, his house of cards trembled in the breeze.

 

 

 


End file.
